Wednesday, September 28, 2011

I Pledge Allegiance to the United States of Mind

The hard part, of course, is transmuting temporary spiritual states into permanent traits, which I suppose is what the religious life is all about. Interestingly, this also happens to be what distinguishes a neurosis -- or what is called an Axis I disorder -- from a personality disorder, or Axis II.

An Axis I condition is analogous to a person with, say, a cold or flu. It is presumed to be something "added on" to the personality, something either isolated from the rest (like a simple phobia) or temporary and time-limited, like certain anxiety or depressive disorders; you might say that that Axis I conditions are limited and bound, either in living-time or in psychic space.

But a personality disorder involves the whole person, and affects every area of functioning -- relationships, thinking, perception, emotional stability, impulses, self image, the whole existentialada. (And it's not an either/or division, more of a continuum.)

One can draw the same distinction with regard to spiritual development. For Symeon, what begins with gratuitous divine ingressions is gradually assimilated into the "whole person," so to speak: from states to traits; from Axis I disorder to an Axis II spiritual order. Of note, some degree of dis-order usually must precede the order, i.e., some disassembly required: creative destruction, order from chaos, spontaneous emergence, yada yada.

The Axis II spiritual condition is one "in which the experience of God as light is no longer a transient irruption into the everyday, involving 'altered states of consciousness,' but a total transformation of the mystic's perception of reality" (Matus). And that is not all; for "the contemplative then becomes a 'theodidact,' one taught by God" in such a manner that the "knowledge" therein "transcends words and concepts," but not completely.

Again, no experience of any kind can be communicated directly, but a linguistically -- or musically or artistically -- gifted person can communicate more of it than others, just as a poet can transform and transmit the everyday into something sublime.

Symeon writes that one goes from "experiencing" the Light to being united with it, "but not as if he were in a continual state of ecstasy." Indeed, ec-stasy implies "standing outside" oneself, but this is the opposite movement. It is the Deep Within, except that it radiates outward, illuminating everything: "persons and things are perceived as they really are in God" (ibid.).

Importantly, this is not just personal theosis -- the realization of God -- but cosmotheosis, a word apparently made up by the enigmatic One Cosmos author. It is the fulfillment of the very order of existence and even beyond, for it is "ordered to an eschatological fulfillment beyond this life" (Matus). It is "a foretaste of eternal glory here and now."

This brings to mind Paul's lament about the "futility of creation," and how it "has been groaning in the pains of childbirth until now." Who is the child and what is this birth?

For Symeon, the penetration of the Divine Light isn't only a matter of psychic transformation, which would be too superficial. Rather, Christianity doesn't separate soul from body, and treats the former as the form of the latter. Therefore, Symeon "insists on the penetration of the transforming light into our consciousness and into our very flesh." Again it is not an explosive ecstasy but an implosive in-stasy, so to speak.

In the One Cosmos book, the author refers to such individuals as divine "fleshlights," each a kind of saintly newborn testavus for the restavus, illuminating the Way. Without them, each person would have to reinvent the wheel of karma.

The archetype and necessary condition of this union of light and flesh is, of course, Christ, without whom our own (↑) would be futile. He is the "inseparable union of the two energies and two wills," i.e., (↓ ↑), only in one continuous open circle (a kind of discontinuity-within-deuscontinuity).

In reality, it is this divine spiral into which we leap when we take that leap of faith. Looked at in this way, it is not so much our own (↑) that is efficacious, but (↑) within the context of (↓ ↑), so that "we have only to cooperate freely and actively with this work" (Matus).

In other words, it must be emphasized that the human "struggle for virtue" doesn't "imply on our part an ability to produce the light. It is always God, in his perfect freedom, who dispenses his grace" (ibid.).

[W]hereas the material sun rises and then sets, giving way to darkness, God must become an ever-rising sun in the believer, who himself then becomes, in the world, like an ever-new dawn.... This rising dawn... is also the descent of the divine sun on or within him. It is this descent which makes him ascend in the spirit.

11 comments:

This may be a bit of a digression, or maybe not, but I was just thinking about the nature of relationships and how pretty much any relationship necessarily transforms the people involved, in greater or lesser ways. For instance, the way that the child is the progenitor of the parents. And of course, the deeper the relationship, the more transformative it usually is, but even the most casual and fleeting encounter may sometimes have life-altering effects. Given that this is true between human subjects, how much more so when the inter-action is (↓ ↑)?

Rather, Christianity doesn't separate soul from body, and treats the former as the form of the latter.

I think a lot of people miss that. Jesus healed many and the focus is usually on the miraculous restoration of right functioning in the body, but He is first and foremost the Great Physician of the soul. Jesus is a soul-Man.

"In other words, it must be emphasized that the human "struggle for virtue" doesn't "imply on our part an ability to produce the light. It is always God, in his perfect freedom, who dispenses his grace" (ibid.). "

We perceive, not conceive, the Truth (Word has it that that's been done already).

Good question. I used to think that, but came to realize that Christianity is a full-service religion: bhakti, karma, jnani, raja, tantra, etc. One might even say that it is an "integral yoga," a la Aurobindo, in that it unites body, soul and spirit.

What About Bob?

Who spirals down the celestial firepole on wings of slack, seizes the wheel of the cosmic bus, and embarks upin a bewilderness adventure of higher nondoodling? Who, haloed be his gnome, loiters on the threshold of the transdimensional doorway, looking for handouts from Petey? Who, with his doppelgägster and testy snideprick, Cousin Dupree, wields the pliers and blowtorch of fine insultainment for the ridicure of assouls? Who is the gentleman loaffeur who yoinks the sword from the stoned philosopher and shoves it in the breadbasket of metaphysical ignorance and tenure? Whose New Testavus for the Restavus blows the locked doors of the empyrean off their rusty old hinges and sheds a beam of intense darkness on the world enigma? Who is the Biggest Fakir of the Vertical Church of God Knows What, channeling the roaring torrent of 〇 into the feeble stream of cyberspace? Who is the masked pandit who lobs the first water balloon out the motel window at the annual Raccoon convention? Who is your nonlocal partner in disorganized crimethink? Shut your mouth! But I'm talkin' about bʘb! Then we can dig it!

Goround ZerO:

Search and Ye Never Knows What Ye Might Find:

The Cosmic Area Rug:

The empty center is Beyond-Being. The circles are dimensions of Being. Your life is a path for the Spirit to pass from periphery to center. Thoughts and choices -- truth and virtue -- are the paving stones.

Only Error is Transmitted:

Buck Mulligan, Official Mascot

Official Sponsor of the Kosmic Kit Scouts, Laniakea Supercluster Chapter

Fuck You: War

Late last night, in search of light, I watched a ball of fire streak across the midnight sky. I watched it glow, then grow, then shrink, then sink into the silhouette of morning. As I watched it die, I said, ‘Hey, I’ve got a lot in common with that light.’ That’s right. I’m alive with the fire of my life, which streaks across my span of time and is seen by those who lift their eyes in search of light to help them though the long, dark night. --Nilsson

We see that yesterday is our birthday, today is our life, and tomorrow we are gone. So we have just one day to learn all we need to know, and that day is today. --Petey